Leo floated in the suffocating darkness that refused to name itself. No horizon, no stars, no foundation. Merely the silence of an eternal void, where thought itself bled into nothing. For a long time, he did not move, because there was no direction to move in, no meaning to step toward, no guarantee that steps were possible. And yet—inevitably—the void folded open like a slit in reality, and there it was again: The Endless Corridors.
The corridors were not halls made of stone or wood, nor of anything human hands could fashion. They were structures woven of black mirrors and dissolving geometry, infinite in both length and contradiction, hallways that twisted into themselves and yet never ended, paths that repeated without ever truly returning. They breathed, as though each wall inhaled the air Leo could no longer feel. Shadows peeled from them, reaching, crawling, vanishing. And Leo knew, as he had known before: there was no exit, no center, only continuation without mercy.
He began to walk.
Each step echoed like thunder, though the ground was not stone. His feet landed on something pliant, as if the corridors themselves were made of memories—rotting, collapsing, reforming in the wake of his steps. He walked faster, as though outrunning the infinite repetition. He ran, not from fear, but from the dreadful realization that standing still was the same as dissolving into the structure itself. The faster he moved, the more the corridors shifted. Hallways folded upon themselves, staircases inverted, doors yawned open into gulfs of radiant blackness. He did not stop. He could not stop.
Then, without warning, the corridor shattered beneath him.
Leo stumbled, leaning over the ledge, and found that beneath the floors of the infinite halls was something else—a chasm not filled with space, but with discarded fragments of the corridors themselves. It was not a foundation. It was a dumping ground, a chaos of rejected infinities: hallways torn apart, ceilings dangling into the abyss, endless doors floating like bones in a graveyard that stretched into nowhere. It was a burial pit of failed realities.
And his voice cracked as he whispered into the abyss, naming it:"The Cast-Off Hallways. The Abyssal Galleries. The Null Corridors. The Hollow Repetition. The Ashen Spiral. The Forgotten Steps. The Broken Return. The Lost Dimension…"
The names bled out of him, unending, a litany of sorrow carved into sound. He named the abyss until names themselves fractured into silence, until the act of naming became a prayer to futility. There was no bottom to what he saw, no anchor, no hope of navigation. And still—still—the corridors pulled him forward.
Leo blinked once, and the world convulsed.
Suddenly he was elsewhere.
The corridors dissolved and spat him into another void, where in his hands appeared a weapon: a sword, impossibly ancient, heavier than the concept of time. It hummed with voices not his own, the sighs of gods who had drowned in their own eternity. Leo gripped it, his knuckles white, his veins surging with something primal, something borrowed from ages before existence. But before he could even swing it, before he could test its weight, the sword crumbled into ash.
Dust flowed between his fingers, dissolving as though the weapon had never been real.Leo's chest tightened. His breath halted. His heart pounded with the echo of betrayal, but betrayal from whom? The gods? The corridors? Or reality itself?
He had no answer. Only silence.
The void trembled again, and from the broken fabric of everywhere, a shape descended. It was not a god. Not an angel. Not a demon. It was something beyond classification, beyond divinity or monstrosity. Its body was composed of twisting masses of pulsating flesh and shadow, its form impossible to measure, its presence the rewriting of logic. Its torso was a storm, its arms were rivers of obsidian, and its face—if it had a face—was a mosaic of mouths chanting silent hymns. But the worst were the eyes. Countless, infinite, blinking eyes scattered across its form, each one turning, searching, devouring.
Leo knew the name, though he had never learned it.Yog-shothoth.
The creature's body pulsed with eternity. Its voices spoke in no language, and yet every syllable drilled into Leo's bones. He did not charge. He did not run. Instead, Leo floated, his body rising without command, his mind sliding between terror and clarity. He gazed into the endless eyes, and they gazed back, unraveling him layer by layer, memory by memory. He should have disintegrated. He should have become less than ash.
But instead—he moved.
Leo raised his hand and clapped. A simple motion. But the sound did not echo; it detonated. The clap fractured the silence of the corridors, spilling into a wave of soundless sound, an explosion of vibration that was not heard but felt across every atom. The wave struck Yog-shothoth. The beast trembled. Its eyes shuttered, wept, collapsed into themselves. Its screams were without sound, but the agony shook the endless halls like the collapse of stars. Piece by piece, limb by limb, the ancient deity dissolved into dust, its endless body breaking apart, folding into silence.
And Leo remained floating, his chest heaving. His hand burned with phantom fire.
From the wreckage of silence, a voice whispered. Not from Yog-shothoth. Not from the corridors. From everywhere, from nowhere, from beyond time itself.Yahweh.
"Do not despair," the voice breathed, smooth as eternity itself. "Strength is not a gift, but a becoming. You are becoming. The world itself bends to the rhythm of your endurance. Do not seek to flee the void—embrace it. The longer you walk, the longer you break, the stronger you are remade. This world will grow sharper, heavier, darker, as you rise. And so will you."
Leo's eyes widened. His lips parted. He wanted to speak. But no words came. Only breath. Only silence.
And then the corridors closed again. The void pressed in. The silence screamed without sound.
Leo drifted, weightless, his eyes staring into the infinite black that wrapped tighter than chains. He did not resist. He did not surrender. He simply was—caught between fading and becoming.
His lips moved. His voice was quieter than thought.
"…Am I only dreaming? Or am I the dream itself?"
And the void did not answer.
Leo closed his eyes. The darkness swallowed all.
To be continued…